Storyline

While the Cigarette Smoking Man listens in on a conversation Scully and Mulder are having with Froehike, he recalls his own past and how he got to be where he is today. As a young army officer, working alongside Mulder's father, he was recruited by a General and an intelligence operative. His past was effectively erased and from that point working only in the shadow world. He was implicated in the assassination of presidents and civil rights leaders. He was also a frustrated mystery writer but his bizarre tales of assassinations and alien conspiracies are seen as too outlandish by the publishers he's approached. Written by
garykmcd

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Did You Know?

Trivia

Curiously, neither young Bill Mulder and young CSM are interpreted by the same actors that in Apocrypha. Even the events happenned there were only a few years before. See more »

Goofs

CSM has some letter head with an address in Pasadena California. La Cienega is not a street in Pasadena and the zip code is not a Pasadena zip code. Rather, the Zip Code is in nearby South Pasadena and La Cienega is in Los Angeles. See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

User Reviews

In a nine-season long series, containing about 200 episodes, most episodes will be about the same quality. Some of the episodes however, will be merely crap - and very few, no matter how good the series is - or how good the rest of the episodes are, will be extremely good.

This singular episode S04E07, Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man is one of the best, if the not the best episode in the X-files universe. It creates a base both for the mythology - and the episodes seen before, and the episodes that are still to come in the rest of the episodes.

So, who is the Cancer Man / The Cigarette Smoking Man? That question is, at this point in the series not answered, but there are given some clues in this episode, that may not be the final answer. I will, however, not go deeper into that matter here - because I find it preposterous to leave any spoilers, for those of you who hasn't seen the series yet.

And if you haven't seen this episode yet, look forward to it with glee. It really is great.

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